All The Jagged Edges
by kasey8473
Summary: Sam attempts to face the sudden loss of Dean, but he never expected to lose his way in the process. Set between S7 and S8.


Title: All the Jagged Edges  
Summary: Sam attempts to face the sudden loss of Dean, but he never expected to lose his way in the process. Set between S7 and S8.  
Rating: K+  
Disclaimer: 'Supernatural' was created by Eric Kripke. No disrespect is intended with this work of fan fiction.  
Notes: This came about from me trying to make sense of Sam not looking for Dean.

* * *

He walked from the building, numb to the core and feeling strangely detached from the world around him. It was as if he was merely an observer, not truly alive, simply watching as Castiel had once said the angels had done for centuries.

Crowley had taken Kevin and gone and Dean and Castiel….

They'd disappeared when Dick Roman exploded. What did that even mean? Death? Again? Heaven, Hell, Purgatory…what? Another dimension? Those did exist. The fairies lived in one. Where was Dean and how could he search the entirety of creation when he wasn't sure where Dean had gone?

Vanished.

Poof.

_Dean has left the building._

An hysterical laugh left him at the thought, said in his mind by Dean's voice, the name 'Elvis' replaced by 'Dean'.

A hollow ache began to grow inside him and he desperately tried to stop it, to reason it out. Reasoning had worked well for him in the past, but this time he couldn't seem to put all of the pieces in a neat line. The edges wouldn't align in anything resembling sense.

Roman, bone, Dean, explosion….

Sam realized his breaths were fast and shaky and he swallowed hard, stepping to the Impala. The car was a wreck. Somehow, they always seemed to wreck it.

Her, he mentally corrected himself. Dean always called the car 'her'.

He laid his hands on her side, vaguely aware that he was sobbing and that those sobs were hurting his throat. It was as if they were being released from deep in his soul and those intense emotions loosing from him frightened him because he knew very well where his emotions could take him if he lost control.

He had to keep control.

His face was wet with tears, his nose stopping up with mucus.

Alone.

A sense of heaviness filled him, a weight he couldn't escape.

Get it together, he told himself, but unlike the previous times he'd lost Dean, he couldn't. Every time he tried, he felt like there were knives inside of him, scraping the open aching wound left by Dean's disappearance.

A cold panic curled through him and he shoved it down, still attempting to work through the grief and formulate a plan as he took the Impala to be fixed. Sam paid extra to get it done faster, thinking it'd help because it had always helped Dean deal with things.

It didn't work. It didn't make the pieces go together like they should. It didn't aid him in figuring out where to go or what to do next.

Why didn't it help?

He was bewildered by that failure. Action had always helped in the past and it wasn't working. Why wasn't it working? Why didn't those pieces line up for him?

The panic he'd been shoving down inside him surfaced and he broke out in a cold sweat that dampened his shirt. He'd go to the cabin. That was it. He'd go there and once he was there he'd be able to get his head together.

The empty hole inside him grew, yawning wide, threatening to engulf him completely and he headed for Rufus' cabin. Surely he'd be able to concentrate and decide what to do to find Dean once he got there.

Yet he felt even worse sitting in the driver's seat on the way there without Dean beside him. He imagined he could see Dean there, looking at him and saying, "Well, Sammy? What are you going to do? You've got a plan, right?"

He had no answer for the phantom passenger. All he could do was bawl like a baby, his mind refusing to cooperate. Thoughts of hunting and starting a big long search for Dean were slippery things, unwilling to let him latch on to them and he paced the cabin.

Where did he start? Where did he even begin?

Just turning and seeing the books that were there sent panic racing through him and he found himself shaking and sweating, nearly hyperventilating. The cabin seemed to close in on him. Claustrophobic. His throat tightened, breaths wheezing. There wasn't enough air and he was both hot and cold at the same time.

Sam ditched his phones and then he was driving, running away from the life that always seemed to find him and hoping that maybe, someday, he could begin to come to terms with losing Dean once more. Maybe the hole inside him would heal and maybe, on that day, he could again find his way.

But right now, Sam couldn't face his grief. He couldn't face having lost Dean for what seemed like the millionth time on top of everything else and so he drove. He blanked his mind and thought of nothing and of no one, as the tires thumped on the highway in a comforting soundtrack and the scenery passed in a blur. In those hours that passed, he could pretend he was someone other than who he really was and for that man, everything was okay. Everything was going to _be_ okay.

He repeated those words to himself. _Everything will be okay._

Sam Winchester drove.


End file.
